


Whatever Happened to Thank You?

by cableknitbowtiesarecool



Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Gen, Random Crimefighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cableknitbowtiesarecool/pseuds/cableknitbowtiesarecool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-Keene Act Rorschach and Nite Owl rescue a victim of kidnapping. Rorschach remembers this one because she was so thankful afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever Happened to Thank You?

**Author's Note:**

> There is literally no point to this fic. I was just bored and scrawled a tiny watchmen fic. If you like sort of pretty words then cool. If not, welp, that's fine. Not exactly expecting this to get many hits. But I liked writing it. Sorry about the summary.
> 
> Disclaimer: Don't own anyone but the OC.

The room stank of vomit, blood, and sex that combined to form an odor that brought tears to Nite Owl’s eyes beneath his goggles as Rorschach kicked the door off its hinges. 

The duo had been searching for the missing woman since she had been kidnapped seventy-two hours previous. In fact, Rorschach had been itching for a fight the moment her face had flashed across Nite Owl’s television screen.

The single fluorescent lightbulb cast a sickly light on a soiled bed, upon which a thin figure was handcuffed. Her chest barely rose and fell through the torn red slip that clung to her breasts and hardly hid her from view. Nite Owl grimaced at the blood caked on her inner thighs. 

Without a word, Rorschach crossed the room. When the masked figure attempted to grab at the cuffs on her wrists, the woman jerked away suddenly, as if she had been burned. A strangled cry rose from her throat. 

“It’s okay,” Dan felt himself saying. “We’re here to help you.”

As she registered the words, her emerald eyes filled with tears. Rorschach gave a violent tug on each cuff with little to show for it. “Cuffs locked,” he said, his gravelly voice slicing the tension. 

Just then, a noise sounded behind them, and Dan felt a fist connect with his face. Turning, he barely avoided a second hit. Rorschach reacted in a blur of fists and legs as he disposed of one of the men, knocking the now unconscious form to the ground. Nite Owl administered a hard jab to his own attacker’s stomach, sending the wind from his lungs. A few more punches and a knee to the chest finished him.

Rorschach bent over his man, and withdrew a tiny silver key from his breast pocket. A moment later, two resounding clicks echoed through the tiny room. “I’ll get Archie,” Nite Owl said to his partner. “Bring her up.” With that, he dashed up the rusted stairs, leaving the other two behind.

Sighing in resignation, Rorschach bent to the woman, who he noticed was quite petite when he looked past the abused face and blood soaked wrists and legs. This was just as well. Although Rorschach was a force to reckoned with, he had never declared himself to be the tallest of men at 5’6”. This female looked to be about three inches shorter than he. Bracing himself with a tightening of his toned arm muscles, he lifted her from the crusted bed sheets, not flinching from the strong scent of sick and fear that emanated from her clothing and long dark hair. The woman reacted with a small moan of pain as she tucked her head against his chest and struggled to wrap a pair of abused arms around his neck. He had little trouble spiriting her up the stairs and was relieved to reach the fresh air of the ground floor. 

The snow on the street, stained the color of umber from the grime of the sidewalk, advocated for how frigid the air was. The woman in Rorschach’s arms shivered violently, having been inside for seventy-two straight hours and being clad in little more than a thin rag.

Rorschach spied movement to his left and bit back a curse at the advancing gang. He and his partner were well known among the scum of the earth, and he figured that he was about to be approached about that reputation. It was something that, under the circumstances, he was loathe to address. Cursing inopportune timing, Rorschach muttered to the woman before placing her on the stoop of the door that they had just exited. She slumped like a rag doll against the door frame as four men descended upon her would-be rescuer. 

Rorschach fell and rolled to avoid a shiv flying at his head and cursed as it sliced his arm. In irritation, he kicked the wielder’s feet out from him under him roughly. As he rendered the man unconscious, another descended. Thankfully, the owl ship appeared above the fray, causing the men to scatter away from the flames that it emitted. “Late, Daniel,” Rorschach muttered, as he once again scooped the victim into his arms. She cried out at the sudden change in position, as she had the first time. Rorschach glanced down at her. She had gone pale with the intense pain in her ribs and legs, and tears slipped down her grimy cheeks. 

Nite Owl was outlined in the doorway of the well lit owl ship as Rorschach shoved past. “Here, Rorschach. Put her here.” Dan indicated a tiny cot that pulled out of the wall of the ship. Complying, the masked man placed his charge down gingerly, conscious of her injuries now that the immediate danger had passed. She continued to draw trembling breaths as her body convulsed. She was barely conscious as Nite Owl joined his partner at her side after jerking the door closed. “You can sleep now, if you want,” Dan said to her gently. 

She shook her head weakly, refusing to lose cognitive thought. 

“All right. I’m gonna get us out of here. Get you some help,” he told her. With that, he turned and went to pilot the ship to the awaiting hospital. Rorschach made a move to rise as well, when she reached out and grasped his gloved hand feebly. Unused to this type of human contact, Rorschach nearly jerked back. Her eyes pleaded with him as her split lips formed the words: “C-could you stay?” The voice was a tiny series of squeaks and cracks that he could barely understand. Generally, he would have merely turned away, too uncomfortable to comply, but there was something about her weak form and her ruined voice begging him to remain by her side that compelled him to oblige. Awkwardly, he sat on the edge of the cot. 

She could feel her determination to remain conscious wavering as intense fatigue and pain threatened to knock her out. She tightened the grip of her tiny hand on her rescuer’s, unable to convey emotion in any other way, as vocalization added to the buzzing in her most likely concussed head. 

Dan glanced back and was surprised to see his masked partner sitting with the victim. Rorschach, after all, was not one for tenderness. Yet there he was, his fingers intertwined with hers. Nite Owl swore that he would never be able to predict his partner’s actions, for as long as he would know him. 

***

When they landed on the roof of the hospital, the victim had lost consciousness. Rorschach drew her into his arms a final time, and Dan held open the roof entrance door to the building. 

The returning heroes were welcomed in a flurry of white coats. Nurses pulled the abused woman from Rorschach’s arms and hurriedly set to stabilizing her. “This is the woman that went missing not too long ago,” one of the nurses exclaimed as he pushed an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. 

In the confusion and activity, she had been shaken awake. As the nurses started to wheel her away to the OR, she cried out for them to wait in a horrible screeching voice.

They hesitated, but complied for a moment as she once again reached out to Rorschach, her tortured green eyes beckoning him again to her side. And once again, He found himself complying against his better judgement. She grasped his hand and pushed something into its palm, eyes never leaving his face. Her gaze was so intense that, had he not known better, he would have sworn that she could see through his mask. She closed his fingers over the object, and choked out a “thank you” before the doctors wheeled her down the hallway.

***

Once back in the owl ship, Dan took a breath, reveling in the sudden quiet. “Why is it that they always thank you,” he asked, offering a joke to his partner to lighten the bleak mood. 

Rorschach didn’t respond, not that Nite Owl had expected he would. Instead, he gazed down at the object she had placed in his hand. It was a small, silver dog tag. The name on the front read: Nathaniel Germaine, but Rorschach was more interested in the inscription on the back. The American Eagle that was a symbol of the United States Marine Corps was encircled with the words: “Never compromise justice and freedom.” Where on her person she had kept this, he had no idea. Slowly, he tucked it into the pocket of his trench coat as Dan maneuvered the owl ship to Rorschach’s apartment in a rough part of New York City. 

***

Her name had been Annika Germaine. Rorschach remembered when she had appeared again on the news, looking much better, though her face was still lacerated and heavily bruised. She had thanked him and Nite Owl from her white hospital bed. She had been unlike any of the other victims that Rorschach had rescued in that she had made no move to mention her ordeal and evoke pity. She merely attempted to convey as much gratitude as possible in a short interview. “I owe these men my life. I would gladly do anything for I could for them if they ever needed my help,” she had said. Rorschach had been surprised, which was rare, that she had seemed so...pure, even in the face of her ordeal. 

It had been five years. She had been only twenty-two. Nathaniel Germaine, as Rorschach had found, had been her father, lost in the Vietnam War. Now, as he sat on the roof of his apartment building, he put aside his leather bound journal, his fingers tickling the cool metal in his pocket. The dog tag was significantly more dented than it had been when she had first given it to him. He passed a gloved thumb over the faded inscription that had become his motto of sorts.

After the Keene Act had passed, Rorschach rarely thought of the people that he had saved in his career as a superhero. However, there had always been something about this one that drew his mind to the night that he had found her. He could safely say that he had never met another human with eyes like hers. So green that one could swear that the color was artificial, and so compelling and sincere that he was sure she could get anything she wanted with a look. 

Scoffing at himself, he dropped the tag back into his pocket, hearing it clink with the pin that he had found in the sewer below Edward Blake’s apartment. He had business to attend to. Those days were over. Who knew what had become of Annika Germaine. Now, all that Rorschach knew was filth and corruption. Likely, if she had ever been innocent to begin with, her innoncence had been swallowed by greed and pain. Funny, being a superhero wasn’t nearly as lucrative as the ridiculous children’s comics had made it seem when he was a kid. They all just came to hate you in the end.


End file.
